


if we wanted, we could fall

by wizened_cynic



Category: Gilmore Girls, Law & Order: SVU
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Crack, Alternate Universe - Magical Realism, Crack, Crossover, F/F, Femslash, Multiple Crossovers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-15
Updated: 2012-07-15
Packaged: 2017-11-10 00:11:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 15,882
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/460073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wizened_cynic/pseuds/wizened_cynic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Alex Cabot falls in love with a gingerbread cookie. Magical realism, bitches!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [omiceti](https://archiveofourown.org/users/omiceti/gifts).



> Back in August of 2011, I was trying to convince her to watch Supernatural, and somehow that ended up with me promising to write a fic in which there were _gingerbread lesbians_. The result is this massive fic, all of which I wrote in several gmail windows from August 2011 to May 2012. I don't even know. It seemed like a good idea at the time.
> 
>   
> 

It was a secret Santa gift from her co-worker Sandy. Alex had all but forgotten about it until it fell from her cupboard, missing her toe by half an inch. 

My First Gingerbread Decorating Kit, it said in bold, bright letters on the front. Ages 6 and up. There was a picture of a cartoon gingerbread man on the box, with gumdrop eyes and a grin that seemed almost savage. No expiration date as far as Alex could tell, but it was almost Valentine's Day, so she couldn't imagine the cookie inside being anything but stale. Unless, of course, it was so full of preservatives that it could last until the end of time, which was just as likely an option. 

Alex considered donating it to the food bank, only to remember that she had no idea where the local food bank was. Almost five months in Fucking Nowhere, Wisconsin, and she still hadn't bothered to ask any questions unless they were absolutely necessary. The whereabouts of the food bank were not, strictly speaking, absolutely necessary. 

She could simply throw it away --- Christmas had come and gone and she'd spent it alone, reading herself into a stupor, reading anything she could get her hands on until she couldn't hear the carolers outside, until she could forget where she was, because words were words and they were the same here and in New York and everywhere else, Sing, O Muse, of the rage of Achilles, of the terrible grief of Alex Cabot --- but it occurred to her that she couldn't remember ever having decorated gingerbread. She must have, as a child, but she tried not to remember too much these days, and if she hadn't, well, wasn't Witness Protection all about new experiences?

What the hell, Alex thought. It wasn't like she had anything better to do. 

Inside the box was a six-inch gingerbread person wrapped in plastic, faceless, genderless, full of promise and artificial flavoring. For the actual decorating, tiny tubes of icing in four different colors, red and green sprinkles, and a packet of what looked like generic M&Ms. 

Now with everything laid out on her kitchen counter, Alex felt slightly ridiculous, a grown woman decorating a gingerbread person alone at home in February, but by then she'd already unwrapped her person and there was a nagging sense of ... duty, maybe, for her to continue. 

She started with the eyes, because they were the easiest: two blue M & M's. Next, she worked on the hair; chocolate icing, because the alternatives were blue and green; her hand slips and she gets a dab of icing on the shoulder, so she decides to make it a girl, a brunette with squiggly hair and a dress of green sprinkles. Red sprinkles for her shoes (ruby slippers, Alex thought, so she could go home) and finally, a smile of red icing that ends up a bit lopsided in one corner, because by then Alex had spent so much time and effort manipulating those stupidly miniscule tubes of icing meant for six-year-olds that her hands were shaking. She might even be sweating. 

"There," she said aloud, gazing down at the finished product.

The gingerbread woman stared back at her with her M&M eyes. 

Alex was almost proud. 

Then the moment was over, and she sighed and prepared to clean up. But before she threw out the last of the icing, her impulses got the better of her and she found herself breaking one of the cardinal rules of Witness Protection.

She picked up the gingerbread woman, turned it onto its back, and wrote, in blue icing, ALEX CABOT. 

It was the first time in five months she'd written her own name. 

Tomorrow she would need to get rid of the evidence. 

Right now, she focused on washing up. 

 

* 

Lorelai loved her human before she was even taken out of the box.

_Hello,_ she wanted to say as soon as her human unwrapped her. _I am your cookie and I love you._

But Lorelai didn't have a mouth yet, or eyes, or gumdrop buttons, so she kept it to herself and let her human give her a mouth and eyes and hair. No gumdrop buttons, which was a little disappointing, but it didn't matter, because Lorelai was her human's cookie and she loved her.

Lorelai waited until her human had gone to bed before she tried getting up and moving around.. It was harder than she thought it would be, what with the lack of opposable thumbs and stumpy, cumbersome legs. Once she got the hang of it, thought, it was a breeze, and soon she was running all around the table, jumping even, and then, oh! And then!

She discovered dancing.

It was _awesome_.

She would've danced all night, but coming to life was a tiring business, and so Lorelai walked back to her spot by the near-empty fruit bowl and dozed off, resting her body against the lone Granny Smith apple.

She woke up to the sounds of her human entering the kitchen. Jumping out from her place, Lorelai evened out the sprinkles in her dress and run to the edge of the table.

"Good morning," Lorelai said.

"Good morning," her human mumbled sleepily. She ignored Lorelai and walked towards the coffee maker, and disappointment swelled up in Lorelai's chest until her human stopped, turned around, and stared suspiciously towards the table. "What the . . .?"

Lorelai took this opportunity to tell her, for the first time, "I am your cookie and I love you."

Now the witch had warned her that her human might try to eat her. This was perfectly understandable as Lorelai smelled delicious and probably tasted delicious as well, something Lorelai hoped she wouldn't have to find out. "If they try to eat you, my dears," the witch told Lorelai and her friends, "you need to run. Do you understand? _Run for your lives_."

But Lorelai's human didn't try to eat her.

She fainted instead.

 

* 

When Alex came to, she was lying on the kitchen floor.

Which was ... odd, but not nearly as odd as the dream she was having, which was possibly the weirdest thing she'd ever experienced until she noticed a pair of eyes peering down at her from the edge of her table.

Blue M&Ms.

"Are you okay?" the gingerbread cookie said. She --- _it_ \--- was clinging onto the edge with its arms and the smile had been replaced by what Alex could've sworn was a look of concern.

This could not be happening.

"This isn't real," Alex said, to herself, because talking to a cookie was _insane_.

"What isn't real?" asked the cookie.

Six months ago she was an ADA, she used words like "sidebar" and "remand" and "res ipsa loquitur", and now she was dead and somebody else and contemplating whether or not to _reply to a cookie_. The realization made her laugh and cry at the same time, and the result  
was a strangled sob that seemed to spook the cookie.

"What isn't real?" the cookie asked again, sounding both confused and mildly annoyed.

"You," Alex said.

(It's over, Cabot, she thought. You can never go home again. Also, you've clearly LOST YOUR FUCKING MIND.)

The cookie took offense to that. "If I weren't real," it said, "could I do this?"

With that, it dove off the table and, landing onto Alex's stomach with a soft thud, it pulled itself up and toddled along Alex's sternum until it was hovering over Alex's face.

"Hi," it said, "I am your cookie and I love you."

(Res ipsa loquitur.)

Alex closed her eyes again. Took a deep breath, like Huang would tell the victims. All she could smell was the the warm, sweet scent of cinnamon and nutmeg, and when she opened her eyes, the cookie was still standing there, except now it had one arm on its waist and was tapping its red shoe against Alex's collarbone.

"Well?" it said.

"You're a cookie."

The cookie looked hurt. "I'm _your_ cookie. And just because I'm a cookie doesn't mean I don't have feelings!"

Alex was not going to apologize to a cookie. She just wasn't.

Especially not when she was still lying on the floor.

Plucking the cookie from her shoulder, Alex pulled herself up onto shaky legs and held it to eye-level for scrutiny. It was solid and --- _warm_ , she realized and when she turned it around, she saw the ALEX CABOT she'd painstakingly written on the back with trembling hands and an uncooperative tube of icing and somehow, seeing her own name, it made all of this real.

Alex turned the cookie back, so that they were staring eye to eye again.

At last, she cleared her throat and said, "I'm sorry," because if she was going to be insane, then she was going to be committed to it.

"If I had a heart, it would've been broken," the cookie said, bereft. It -- _she_ , Alex relented --- pouted for another second before the tight line of icing turned upwards at the corners and elongated into a giant grin. "Good thing I'm 100% gingerbread, with no artificial flavoring or preservatives!"

She wriggled out of Alex's grasp and onto her shoulder, and proceeded to wrap its stubby arms around Alex's neck in an effort to hug. "Hello," she said, "I am your cookie and I love you."

"Yes," Alex said, resigned to her lack of mental health, "I got that."

"My name is Lorelai. I am your cookie and I love you."

Lorelai. Where the hell did she come up with Lorelai?

"Hi, Lorelai."

Lorelai pulled away from Alex's neck and frowned. "Are you going to eat me?"

"What?"

"Because I can run. Like, really fast. You'd never be able to catch me."

"I can honestly say that I have absolutely no desire to eat you," Alex told her. "You can stay put. Although if you disappeared, it would be better for my sanity."

"It's too late for that," Lorelai said.

"You're probably right," Alex agreed. "My name is --- Alex," she decided, because what the hell, she was talking to a cookie. What was Lorelai going to do, rat her out to a Keebler Elf?

"Alex." Lorelai beamed. "Nice to meet you, Alex. Let’s be friends!"

It was possibly the most enticing offer Alex had received since moving to Wisconsin. 

So, like any good lawyer, she accepted.


	2. Chapter 2

It didn't take long for Alex to discover the sorts of trouble an unsupervised cookie could get itself into. 

It took her only slightly longer before she reconciled herself to the absurdity of the whole situation, but once she'd mopped up the marshmallow creme Lorelai had vomited on her counter after getting drunk on root beer, Alex was pretty convinced that the talking, moving, and now hungover cookie was here to stay.

"I don't feel good," Lorelai moaned, clutching her head with one arm. 

"It's not even real beer," Alex said, laying her down on a folded paper towel. "Besides, how did you get it out of the fridge?" 

"The General opened himself and treated me to it." 

"Who?" 

"The General. Your fridge. He says he wishes you ate better food because all that take-out is making him sick." 

"You're _drunk_ ," Alex said, because she could only handle one inanimate object coming to life at a time. 

Lorelai didn't reply, and a few minutes later, she was snoring.

That was the first day. 

The second day, Lorelai discovered coffee. 

Alex arrived home from work to discover her entire kitchen counter in disarray, and Lorelai literally bouncing from one end to the other. "Alex!" Lorelai yelled as soon as she saw Alex. "Alex! Alex Alex Alex! I am your cookie and I love you! But not as much as I love coffee! Am I right, boys?" She glanced in the direction of the coffeemaker, the toaster, and the microwave, all of which, thankfully, did not answer.

"They're shy," Lorelai explained before sprinting towards Alex --- damn, she _was_ fast and leaping off the edge of the counter into Alex's arms. "No worries! You're still my favorite! We're BFF!" 

"How do you even know what BFF means?" 

"I am a very learned cookie." 

"Right," Alex said.

"You don't sound like you believe me," Lorelai said. 

"It's not that I don't believe you, it's more like I don't have a basis for comparison. You're the only anthropomorphic cookie I've ever known." 

"So you do agree that I'm very smart and delicious."

"That's not what I said."

"But I'm the only cookie you know who can talk! And walk! And do this!" 

To Alex's horror and amazement, Lorelai began to jump up and down and move her limbs in a series of movements that, she hated to admit, was kind of adorable. "C is for Cookie, that's good enough for me," Lorelai sang as she continued to dance, "C is for Cookie, that's good enough for me. Oh, cookie, cookie, cookie, cookie starts with C!"

The laugh took Alex by surprise, ripped its way out of her throat before she realized what was happening. "What the hell _is_ that?" she asked, unable to stop laughing now that she'd started. 

"I'm pop-locking," Lorelai said blissfully. "Why, what does it look like?"

"Like you're in danger of hurting yourself." 

As soon as she said that, Lorelai lost her balance and tumbled forward, off the edge of the table. "Help!" she cried, and without thinking Alex lunged forward and grabbed Lorelai before she reached the floor. 

It took a minute for both of them to catch their breath. (Wait: do cookies breathe?) 

"You saved me," Lorelai said in awe. "I could've broken my arms and legs and head, but you saved me." 

"Wouldn't want you handicapped and unable to pop-lock," Alex said, only halfway sarcastic. 

"A-ha! So you admit I _was_ popping and not ---"

"Looking completely spastic." 

Lorelai stuck her tongue out at Alex, which made Alex laugh again, because she wasn't aware that cookies could have tongues. "Hey, Alex." 

"What?" 

"I like it when you laugh."

Alex considered this for a moment, then pushed the thought away and started making plans to cookie-proof the kitchen.

 

* 

Lorelai led a pretty good life for a cookie. 

She knew that, and she had no real complaints, aside from the fact that she got the most boring human in the history of the world. 

Alex had to work most days, and she refused to take Lorelai to the office no matter how hard Lorelai begged, so Lorelai would stay on the couch and watch TV until Alex came home.

Everything Lorelai learned, she learned from television. She learned that her favorite color was pink, that anything other than granite counters were unacceptable, that Seth loved Ryan, that for $49.99 you could buy a steam mop that would kill 99% of the harmful germs on your floors _and_ if you ordered immediately you could get a free iron to go with it (worth $29.99). 

"Stop watching the Home Shopping Network," Alex told her when Lorelai tried to get her to buy a Magic Bullet. You could make smoothies with it. With vegetables. Lorelai wouldn't drink it, and she wouldn't advise anybody to, but she thought she would enjoy hearing the vegetables scream before they were shoved into the machine and chopped into pieces. Or liquefied. There were four blending options! 

"But I've got nothing else to do," Lorelai whined. "You never do anything fun." 

"Two weeks ago you were in a box," Alex said. "If I were you, I wouldn't be that picky." 

"I want to go outside," Lorelai said. She learned from TV that Outside was a place full of adventure. "I want to see the palm trees." 

"We live in Wisconsin," Alex said, as if that meant anything to Lorelai. "No palm trees. Not a whole lot of anything except snow."

"Snow! I love snow!" Lorelai hopped off the arm of the sofa and into Alex's lap, pushing away the newspaper she'd been trying to read. "Come on, let's go! Outside!"

Alex narrowed her eyes at Lorelai. "If I take you outside, will you leave me alone?"

"Probably not. But if you don't, I'm just going to sit here and sing my themesong until you do." 

"Oh, you have a themesong now." 

"Yes, and it's really, really annoying." 

"I would expect nothing less from you." Alex sighed and took those things off her face. Glasses, they were called. Lorelai liked it when Alex wore them, she thought as she hopped onto Alex's outstretched hand. 

Lorelai had never been anywhere other than the kitchen and the living room, so it was a treat to go down the hallway and out the front door and ---

"Ooooh," Lorelai gasped as a new sensation hit her. It surrounded her on all sides and she couldn't feel her legs or arms or face. "It's _cold_." 

"As winter tends to be. Here." 

Alex set her down on a ledge of something white and fluffy like powdered sugar. 

"Hello, snow," Lorelai said. 

"Hello," came a million tiny voices. Lorelai looked up and saw them, the tiny bits of snow, floating down like somebody high up in the sky was sifting a cup of flour. It reminded her of Before, when the witch had just started to work on Lorelai and her friends. It was the most beautiful thing Lorelai had ever seen, and Lorelai knew then that she loved snow more than anything else in the world, except for maybe Alex. 

Lorelai watched the snow fall for a long time, amazed by how something could be so pretty, until Alex said, "Are we done here?" 

"Can we go farther Outside next time?" Lorelai asked. If snow was so wonderful, she couldn't wait to see what else was out there. She'd heard good things about Target. 

"If you're good," Alex said.

"I'm always good," Lorelai said. She held out her arm. "But I'll be extra good if you take me outside again. Pinky swear."

"You do know you don't actually have a pinky."

"Semantics." 

Alex raised her eyebrows, but she took Lorelai's arm and shook it. 

 

* 

"You're a liar," Lorelai said, with all the venom a six-inch tall cookie contained, which was to say, not a whole lot. "You said you would take me outside and you didn't." 

"I said I would take you outside if you were good," Alex pointed out, "and who was it that dumped an entire bag of frozen peas into the sink and turned on the garbage disposal?" 

(Speaking of which, Alex had no idea how Lorelai managed to do that. She didn't want to find out.) 

"I was trying to protect you!"

"From what, nutrients? I told you; I'm not a cookie, I can't live on sugar all the time." 

"Why not? It feels great! I have so much energy, and it's great for my complexion."

"Because of a little something called diabetes. But that's not my point," Alex paused as she realized that she'd been arguing with a cookie for ten minutes, and that it felt completely natural to her. Shit. "My point is, you didn't uphold your end of the bargain, so you're going to have to sit on that couch and watch C-SPAN until you leave my vegetables alone."

"NEVER!" Lorelai shouted, throwing herself into a corner of the sofa and covering herself with a cushion. 

"Suit yourself," Alex said, tossing the remote into her purse. Remote, check. Lunch, check. Keys --- she'd left them by her nightstand. She went to fetch them, and when she came back Lorelai was still beneath the cushion, refusing to answer when Alex announced, "I'm leaving." 

Alex shook her head, more at herself than anything. Here she was, bickering with a cookie like it was an everyday occurrence (it _was_ practically an everyday occurrence), like it wasn't crazy or weird or unfathomable. Maybe that was the very definition of insanity: nothing else in the world seemed insane, because _you_ were. 

Insane or not, that was how Alex Cabot lived now. 

She woke up every morning to the smell of gingerbread wafting from the top of her dresser, where Lorelai slept on a plate, tucked beneath a Fruit Roll Up. She went to work at nine-thirty, she ate lunch at noon, she went home at five and had dinner ready by six. She ate while Lorelai pranced around on the table, demanding to know about Alex's day whenever she wasn't lecturing Alex on the evils of fruits and vegetables. In the evenings she watched TV because Lorelai demanded it, and though Alex would never admit it, sometimes she did feel bad about leaving Lorelai alone all day. The insipid Fox shows merely insulted Alex's intelligence and didn't inflict physical pain, and if it made Lorelai happy to have someone to babble to during _The O.C._ , then why not? 

Alex had found what passed for a life. 

Work was slow, as usual. Time was a luxury for New Yorkers; they never had enough of it. But here in Wisconsin, it was the opposite: they had too much. To compensate, everything, everybody moved slower. It could take one of Alex's co-workers hours to read a two-paragraph letter and send it back to her. It once took a whole day just for Alex to get a replacement highlighter for the one she'd used up. 

Unknowingly, she found herself wondering what Lorelai was up to, whether Lorelai was still angry with her, and was startled when a voice called out, "Emily?"

One of the claims adjusters from fourth floor was standing by her cubicle. Jeff, his name was. Maybe John.

"Yes?"

"Do you have the police report for the Henderson file? Domestic break-in?"

Alex didn't, but pretended to poke around her desk, because it would be against the rules of Wisconsin to achieve anything in a timely manner. "I don't seem to have it. Maybe you can ask Tracy?" 

Jeff/John seemed to consider that an acceptable course of action. "Thanks, Em," he said, flashing her a smile before he disappeared. 

No sooner had he left did Alex hear a familiar voice say, "Why did he call you Emily?"

Huang once said that denial was a powerful tool, and now Alex was determined to use it. She closed her eyes and placed her hands over her face, praying that when she opened them again, she would be greeted with silence and Lorelai would be home watching an ER marathon on TNT and _not_ sticking her head out of Alex's purse, demanding to know the sordid details of Alex's double life. 

Or better yet, that when she opened her eyes, she'd be in New York again.


	3. Chapter 3

Lorelai had been aiming for the remote. She figured she could hoist it out of Alex's purse while Alex was in the bedroom, but the remote was heavier than it looked, and Lorelai didn't have thumbs.

Not that it mattered; as soon as Lorelai had landed inside the purse, she realized it would be even more fun if she went to work with Alex. 

As it turned out, work was actually pretty boring. The purse was getting dark and uncomfortable, and she itched to get out. 

"How do you guys do this everyday?" Lorelai asked Alex's lipstick and powder box, who just rolled at their eyes at her and didn't say anything.

"Emily," said an outside voice. 

"Who's Emily?" Lorelai asked Powder Box. 

"Yes?" answered Emily, who sounded like --- wait, was that Alex? 

"Do you have the police report for the Henderson file? Domestic break-in?" 

Some ruffling around, and then Alex, most definitely Alex, said, "I don't seem to have it. Maybe you can ask Tracy?" 

"Thanks, Em," said Outside Voice.

What the hell was going on?" 

Powder Box and Lipstick didn't seem like they wanted to clarify things, and so Lorelai waited until it was quiet again before poking her head out of the purse. Alex was in her chair, typing away on her computer. Nobody else seemed to be around. 

"Why did he call you Emily?" 

Alex turned around. It took her a minute before she found Lorelai, and she did _not_ look happy when she did. Lorelai expected Alex to yell at her, maybe, but instead Alex just put her face in her hands and closed her eyes, and she looked so sad that Lorelai instantly wished she had stayed home instead.

Finally, Alex put her hands down and opened her eyes. Leaning down until she and Lorelai were almost touching noses (if Lorelai had had one; she didn't, and who was to blame?), she whisper-yelled, "WHAT. ARE. YOU. DOING. HERE." 

"Surprise?" Lorelai tried. She gave Alex her biggest, sugariest grin, but as expected, it didn't work. Lorelai didn't mind. Alex got mad at her from time to time, but Alex always forgave her. 

"How many times have I told you, you're not allowed to come to work with me!"

"I wasn't going to," Lorelai explained. "I was just going to steal the remote from your purse, but then I got stuck inside. And you're changing the subject. Why did that guy call you Emily?" 

Alex looked at Lorelai long and hard and said, at last, "I'll explain at home. This isn't the time or place." 

"Are you ---" Lorelai lowered her voice to a thread of a whisper, "a _spy_?"

Another long, hard stare. Then, a sigh. "Just stay out of trouble until lunch. I'll drive you home, and we'll discuss later."

"But Alex ---"

" _Later_." Alex plucked Lorelai out of the purse and placed her in the corner of her cubicle. "I'm keeping an eye on you. If you so much as move, I'm going to give you a bath." 

Lorelai gasped. "Mean!" 

"In tomato juice." 

"I'm seeing a whole new side of you, Alex, and I don't like it," Lorelai said, shaking her head. "Nobody puts baby in the corner!" 

Alex's face meant business. So Lorelai leaned back against the fabric wall and, giving Alex her biggest scowl, stayed perfectly still. After what seemed like forever, she asked, very quietly, "Is it lunch yet?" 

"It's been ten minutes. And I'm not talking to you, because you can't talk." 

"Can I at least move a little? I can't feel my feet, and my face hurts from keeping it this way."

A long pause, and then Alex relented, "Fine. But only a little." 

Lorelai grinned (it did hurt her face to smile again) and hopped forward, then did a few tai chi moves to loosen her joints. Not that she had joints. She was in the middle of doing the Golden Rooster on One Leg Stance when a voice came from above and said, "Emily!" and Lorelai froze. 

Oh god, Lorelai thought. Please let this be quick. The Golden Rooster on One Leg required much more stamina and balance than she had. 

"Emergency staff meeting," the voice said wearily. "Somebody stole Roger's lunch from the fridge again." 

"Be right there," Alex answered, glancing down at Lorelai and mouthing, _Don't move_. 

_Are you kidding me?_ Lorelai mouthed back, but Alex was already gone. 

 

* 

The meeting was a half-hour pedagogical lecture by HR on the evils of stealing. "We've been here before," Gibson droned through half-lidded eyes, "and I want you all to think carefully next time when you open that refrigerator door. Do you take something that belongs to you, or do you take something that belongs to someone else? Ask yourself how you would feel if somebody took _your_ lunch. Make good choices, people, or I'll be seeing you all again here. In a week. Now get out the fuck out." 

Sometimes Alex found it amazing that the company managed to get anything accomplished at all. 

It was their lunch break, to her relief, and she would finally be able to whisk Lorelai home. Alex didn't know her co-workers well, and had no intention to, but the Marshals had specifically told her to lay low and blend in. Don't attract unnecessary attention.

Bringing a walking, talking, sometimes dancing cookie to the office? Alex didn't want to know what sort of attention that would attract. 

When she arrived at the cubicle, however, she noticed something was wrong. There was dirt on her chair and the papers on her desk were a mess, and Lorelai --- Lorelai was missing. 

_Shit._

"Lorelai," she whispered. "Lorelai, this isn't funny." 

Nothing.

Everything else on her desk was accounted for. There was nothing on the floor, no open drawers Lorelai could've fallen into, and she wasn't in Alex's purse. 

Alex didn't know why she was surprised; it wasn't like Lorelai had a fantastic record of good behavior, but she'd expected Lorelai to have some sort of self-preservation at least; didn't she know how much danger an errant cookie could get into? 

Of course she doesn't, Alex realized. She's a goddamn _cookie_. 

She had a terrible image then, of Lorelai breaking into pieces, or thrown into the garbage, or being trapped in the snack room and accidentally taken for somebody's dessert, and oh fuck fuck fuck fuck, Lorelai was Alex's only friend in this whole goddamn sorry existence the Marshals created for her, Lorelai was her cookie and Alex was supposed to take care of her, and Lorelai was _gone_ and where the hell was Alex supposed to start looking? 

"Lorelai." Alex got on her hands and knees. She didn't care if there were other people around. "Lorelai, come on. Don't scare me like this."

Fortunately, everybody seemed to have left for lunch, and nobody saw her crawling down the length of the room, whatever dignity she had once possessed collapsing upon itself like a dying star. 

Finally, she heard a tiny whimper beneath a stack of files. Alex lifted it aside to find Lorelai on the ground, her right arm completely broken off and lying three inches away.

"Oh my god," Alex breathed, taking Lorelai into her hands. "Are you all right?" 

"It hurts," Lorelai wailed. "It hurts so much." 

Anger had always come to Alex far more easily than sympathy, and seeing Lorelai like that, broken, made her all the more furious. "I _told_ to you not to move. I _told_ you to stay out of trouble ---" 

"There was a kid," Lorelai said through her sobs, "he saw me and tried to grab me. I had to run."

"What kid?" Alex demanded. "There is no kid. This is an office, not a playground ---" 

"There was a kid!" Lorelai cried. "I wasn't even moving but he saw me and I know I'm supposed to like kids, but one look at that one and I knew he was going to eat me. So I had to run and I tried to find you but you weren't there, and I was all alone and you were _gone_ and I was so scared and I fell and I thought I would never see you again. And now you're here but you're mad at me, and I wish I'd let him eat me instead!" 

At once Alex felt like a terrible person, which was only fair, since she pretty much _was_ a terrible person. Not that Lorelai herself was entirely blameless, but she deserved the benefit of the doubt (innocent until proven guilty, remember that, Cabot?) and Alex had denied her of that. 

But this, all this was beside the point. 

Alex carefully picked up the broken arm, making sure it didn't crumble further, and placed it in her pocket. Then scooping Lorelai up, she left a note on Gibson's desk telling him she was taking the rest of the day off. 

She was going to fix this. 

 

* 

The pain was excruciating.

Lorelai thought she was going to die. Could cookies die from pain? Could cookies die at all, aside from being eaten? Lorelai didn't want to die. She didn't want to never be able to see Alex again. 

"Where do cookies go after they die?" she asked Alex. "Back into the oven?" 

"You're not going to die," Alex told her. She was driving and had her eyes on the road. Lorelai couldn't tell if Alex was humoring her or not. 

"How do you know? How do you know _anything_?"

"I'm a lawyer," Alex said. "That means I know everything." 

"Liar," Lorelai said. The pain was spreading to her head and her thinking was getting fuzzy, but she knew what a lawyer was and she knew Alex wasn't one. For starters, she didn't wear the right clothes. And her office didn't look anything like where Judge Judy worked. 

"Honest-to-god-truth. I'm --- I used to be a lawyer. But something bad happened, and I had to move away from home. I have to pretend to be somebody else so the people who tried to hurt me before won't find me. You were wondering why my co-worker was calling me Emily? Well, that's why." 

Lorelai let this sink in. "Did they try to eat you too?" she asked. 

"No," Alex said. "But my right arm, it got hurt pretty bad too. Like you." 

"Like me." 

"But I'm fine now, and you will be too."

"Hi," Lorelai said, as the world turned pink and purple and she could feel her eyes getting heavier and heavier, "I am your cookie and I love you." 

"Hang on, Lorelai," Alex's voice was drifting farther and farther away. "Almost there." 

When Lorelai came to, she was on Alex's kitchen table, lying on a paper towel. Alex was leaning over her, her eyes so focused on something that she didn't even see Lorelai wake up. It wasn't until Lorelai let out a little yelp that Alex finally noticed her. 

"Hold still," Alex commanded. "Or I'll mess up." 

Lorelai felt something soft and sticky along the edges of her broken limb, and a few minutes later there was a tiny pinch as Alex pressed something up against it. "There," Alex said gently, rubbing the soothing substance onto Lorelai's arm. "Just give it a couple of minutes."

"You're a lawyer," Lorelai said, recalling the conversation earlier in the car.

"Right," Alex said. 

"You're pretending to be someone called Emily." 

"Well, you're not suffering from head trauma, that's for sure." 

"You had to move away from home." 

"I did." 

"Did you have to leave all your friends?" 

Alex bit her lip. "I did." 

"Is that why you're such a sad sack?" 

"I'm not ---" Alex let out a sound that was like she couldn't decide whether to laugh or to sigh. "I'm not a sad sack."

"But you're sad all the time." 

"Not _all_ the time." 

"Most of the time." 

Alex tilted her head to the side. "Am I?" 

"Yep. A real sad sack." 

"You can stop saying that now. Okay, try moving your arm." 

"What?" 

"Just try it." 

Lorelai did as she was told and was surprised to see that it worked. She could move her arm again! Alex helped her up into a sitting position, and that was when Lorelai saw the tub of Betty Crocker Rich & Creamy Frosting Alex had used to glue Lorelai's arm back to her body. 

And the frosting was _pink_. 

"Wow," Lorelai said, unable to stop staring at her arm. She moved it up and down, stretched it as far as she could. She could see the tiny pink ribbon of frosting in the fracture of her arm, but it was almost as good as new. "You do know everything." 

"I told you so," Alex said. She closed the lid on the frosting and wiped her fingers on a dishtowel. "Now, will you stay out of trouble from now on? For my sake and yours?"

"I'll try," Lorelai said, still working her arm. It was _amazing_. Alex could totally be a cookie surgeon.

"Try harder," Alex said. She got up and started to clean up, and Lorelai ran to her and hugged her around the belly button. 

"Thank you for fixing me," Lorelai said, burying her face in scratchy wool of Alex's sweater.

Alex patted her head and didn't say anything, but she was smiling, and Lorelai knew it was a Bad Thought, but she was secretly glad that Alex was here, with her, instead of being home with her friends, which she knew was where Alex wanted to be.


	4. Chapter 4

There were a million things Lorelai wanted to do, but couldn't, what with her condition and all. 

"It's not a condition," Alex corrected. "It's a state of being."

"I'm sorry," Lorelai said, rolling her eyes so hard there was a chance they could pop right off, "my _state of being._. Point is, I want to do all these things and I can't by myself, so you have to help me!" 

"I don't understand your argument," said Alex.

"There's no argument," said Lorelai. She jumped up and down on Alex's knee, so hard she knew it bordered on hurting. "You have to. You're my human. There are obligations." 

"Says who?"

"Says me." 

"Why do you even want to ride a bike?" 

"Because it looks like fun when they do it on TV!" 

"Oh, that's a _great_ reason for doing something," Alex said, and Lorelai wanted to tell her that House did sarcasm a lot better than she did. "You know they don't make bikes your size, right?" 

"I'll sit in the basket and live vicariously through you." 

"Well, I don't have a bike."

"You're a human. You can _get_ one, like. Anywhere. You can get one at Wal-Mart. Get one with a basket."

"Just so we're clear," Lorelai said as Alex steered the shopping cart towards the aisle with the sporting gear, "I also wanted to ride in one of these, so two birds, one stone, BOOM." 

"Shut up before I change my mind."

The bike was silver and shiny and the cheapest model, because Alex refused to spend over a hundred dollars on something she was going to use once. "Who knows, you might fall in love with it," Lorelai said. "Start biking everywhere before you know it. Like that guy in France." 

"I don't really see competitive cycling in my future. Just a lot of paper-pushing." Alex sighed, but it wasn't really about Lorelai; that much she could tell.

Alex parked the bike on the driveway and together they stared at it for a long, hard while. "Are you sure you want to do this?" 

"Why wouldn't I want to do this?" 

"I don't know, I don't know why you want to do this in the first place." 

"Do humans need a reason for everything?" 

Alex shrugged and plunked Lorelai down into the basket that hung from the handlebars. The wires at the bottom hurt Lorelai's feet, but it didn't matter. She could tell this was going to be worth the sacrifice. Alex stared at the bike some more until Lorelai yelled, "Come on, what are you waiting for?" 

"I haven't done this since I was --- I don't even know how young I was," Alex grumbled as she climbed onto the seat. She put her hands on the handlebars, squeezing down on the brakes even though they haven't even moved yet, so tight Lorelai could see her knuckles turn white. "I don't know if I remember how to do this." 

"It'll come back to you. Go!" 

But Alex just stood there, staring ahead, feet firmly planted on the ground. 

"What are you so scared of?" Lorelai asked. "They've already tried to kill you. What's the worst that can happen? A scraped knee? A mild concussion?" 

"Okay, from now on, only the person who can actually ride the bike gets to make the decisions about riding said bike." 

"Alex," Lorelai said. She was too short to reach Alex's hand, but she would've patted it if she could. "I'll be here the whole time." 

Alex peered into the basket at her. "No offense, but you're not going to be that much of a help in the event of an emergency." 

Dr. Phil said that people like Alex needed love and support, and not talking back, which coincidentally was what Lorelai was dying to do, so she said, "No, but I will be here the whole time." 

"Yes. Yes, you will," Alex said, and pedaled. 

It was almost like flying. 

"This is so cool!" Lorelai screamed as the wind came at her straight in the face. She put her arms up because that was what people did on roller coasters, which reminded her --- next item on her to-do list: ride a roller coaster. "Isn't this cool, Alex?" 

"Keep your voice down," Alex said, but she was pedaling faster now, slowing down only when she turned right at the curb, and through the mesh of the basket Lorelai could see other houses and trees and a real dog and an old lady that looked like Paula Deen and more houses and little kids who stopped and waved.

They went around the block twice, and the bike didn't wobble once, not until the end. By then, it was like Alex didn't know how to stop. But she did stop, concussion-free and no scraped knees, and they were back where they started. Lorelai turned around to look at Alex, who was pink-faced from the wind and panting for breath, but smiling like Lorelai had never seen before, like she was actually happy. 

 

*

Alex couldn't remember the last time she was in a movie theatre. It must have been two, three years ago, before she started at the DA's office. Some film festival in Tribeca she'd attended at the behest of her mother; the movie was French and in black and white. 

She wasn't exactly nostalgic, but it was somehow comforting to know that movie theatres were the same everywhere: the oppressive smell of popcorn and nachos, the young couple noisily making out before the previews were even over, the lone movie go-er sitting by herself two or three rows in front of everyone else. 

Alex realized that she _was_ that person now, the crazy one at the movies all on her lonesome, occasionally muttering to herself. 

Or, in her case, to a gingerbread cookie. 

"So it's like watching TV," Lorelai said. She was sitting on the armrest next to Alex's seat and peering suspiciously at the popcorn that _she_ had insisted Alex to buy. "But in a bigger room with more people. Then why don't we just watch TV?"

"It was _your_ idea to come," Alex reminded her. Lorelai had a list of demands ("They're not demands," Lorelai protested, "I'm asking nicely!") and going to the movies was near the top. "Are you going to have a staredown with that popcorn, or are you going to eat it?" 

"I've never had savory food," Lorelai said. "I don't know if I can handle it. It's a huge step to take. My fellow cookies might see it as a betrayal. I might be shunned, excommunicated, burned at the stake ---" 

Alex handed her a mini-marshmallow and that effectively shut her up. 

The movie began. 

Fifteen minutes in, Alex wondered if she should've chosen something simpler for Lorelai's first movie-going experience, Nora Ephron rather than Charlie Kaufman, but Lorelai was utterly engrossed by the film. Whether she actually understood what was going on was questionable --- hell, even Alex was having to make an effort to follow --- but she was clearly enjoying herself and after a while, so was Alex. 

They were the last to leave because Lorelai insisted on watching the credits all the way through. 

"That," Lorelai said, sighing contentedly as she settled herself in Alex's coat pocket, "was amazing. It's not the same as watching TV, it really isn't." 

"It was a pretty good movie," Alex conceded. 

"I like it when there's a happy ending." Lorelai pondered this for a minute and added, thoughtfully, "It was a happy ending, right?" 

Alex wondered how much Lorelai truly understood about human relationships considering she learned most of it from daytime TV. "Yeah," she said. "It was." 

"There should be more dancing though. All the best movies are about dancing: Footloose, Saturday Night Fever, Dirty Dancing ..." 

"And how do you know this?" 

"Netflix." 

By now Alex had learned not to question Lorelai's ability to get her hands on things (despite not even having _hands_ ), and simply made a mental note to herself to hide her credit cards in a better place. 

"What are we doing next? Dinner?" Lorelai asked once they were in the car and she had resumed her position in Alex's cup holder. 

"I'm not taking you to dinner," Alex said. Being the crazy person muttering to herself at the movies was one thing, being the crazy person muttering to herself at a restaurant was called schizophrenia. 

"But we're on a date!" 

"We are ---" Alex wasn't even sure how to respond to that. "We're not on a date." 

"We could be on a date!" 

"Do you even know what --- never mind. Just. This is not a date." 

"You don't date cookies now? That's _racism_." Lorelai stopped pouting long enough to amend, "Cookiesm."

Alex sighed. "We can stop at Dairy Queen," she said, because then it would be an ice cream social, not a date, and she could live with that. 

"I do love me some Oreo CheeseQuake Blizzard."

"Of course you do." 

"Hey, Alex?"

"Yes?" 

You wouldn't forget me, would you?" 

"Lorelai," Alex said, taking her eyes off the road for a moment to glance down at her, "you're pretty hard to forget."


	5. Chapter 5

As if it wasn't bad enough that Alex had been co-erced into buying a raffle ticket for the St. Thomas More Catholic School's annual spring bazaar, it now seemed as though she might actually have to _attend_ it. 

"Unless you have plans," Margaret said as Alex dropped her off at the school, knowing full well that Alex didn't have any. "Bruce and Sienna would love to meet you."

Bruce was the husband, who'd taken the mini-van that morning, thus requiring Alex to give Margaret a ride, and Sienna was the eight-year-old whose photos were all over Margaret's desk and almost threatened to spill over onto Alex's. Alex didn't know _why_ either of them would want to meet her, and certainly she wasn't eagerly anticipating to reciprocate, but Margaret was easy-going and knew where everything was and possessed the extraordinary talent of being able to get their boss to calm the fuck down whenever he got agitated, which was often, so Alex wasn't about to make an enemy of her.

Plus, there was a chance Alex could win a spa holiday for two at a resort in Elkhart Lake. 

It was harder to find a spot in the church parking lot than Manhattan, but eventually they managed to poach one from an 80-year-old grandmother who gave them the finger and Margaret led Alex through the mess of brightly colored stalls to a card table, behind which a little blonde girl sat solemnly, face in her hands. 

"Mommy!" Sienna brightened as she saw her mother. "You came!" 

"Of course I did! And I brought my friend Emily. Say hi, sweetie." 

"Hi, Emily," the girl said, beaming. 

Alex felt herself smiling back. She's just a kid, she thought. Not a witness, not a victim. Just her co-worker's kid. "Hi, Sienna."

"Would you like to buy a friendship bracelet?" Sienna asked, and that was when Alex noticed the sign taped to the table which said, in various colors of glitter, FRIENDSHIP BRACELETS $5 EACH. "Business's been slow," she added long-sufferingly. 

"I would love to buy one," Alex said, even though the child was robbing her blind and the only real friend Alex had these days didn't even have a wrist. 

Sienna grinned so hard her face might split in two. "Which one do you want?"

"Why don't you pick one for me?" 

Sienna scanned her merchandise thoughtfully and set her finger on a bright pink one. "Pink's my favorite." 

"My friend likes pink too," Alex said. 

"You'll give it to her?"

"Definitely. She'll love it." And Lorelai really would. 

"Don't you want another one for yourself?" 

"She's a sneaky one," Margaret said apologetically ten dollars and fifteen minutes later. 

"Best saleswoman I've ever come across," Alex said. 

Margaret went to help with the concession stand, leaving Alex to meander through the crowds. She followed the scent of coffee and found herself in front of a sign that said BAKE SALE. There was a generous spread of baked goods laid out on the tables: muffins and croissants, snickerdoodles and brownies, cupcakes with marshmallow Peeps on top, all being sold for outrageous prices. 

So, that was how the Catholic church had so much money. 

Alex was about to fork over a small fortune for a coffee and a banana muffin (and a cupcake for Lorelai) when she noticed the row of cookies in the very back of the table, half-hidden, like the baker was ashamed. "Are those gingerbread men?"

One of the women --- Hello, her name was Suzanne --- glanced over and said, "Huh. I guess they are. Even though it's . . . Easter." 

"My son insisted that I make them," explained the other volunteer. "He's three, so he doesn't care what time of year it is. Gingerbread men are a year-round thing for him."

"I'll take one," Alex said, without thinking. 

It didn't occur to her until afterwards that this one might come to life as well, and the strangest thing was, she didn't think she would mind. Lorelai could use a friend, someone to keep her company when Alex was in the office. 

She was continually surprising herself by how utterly _insane_ she'd become. She was going to be _outnumbered._

"You're a lost cause, Cabot," she said to her reflection in the rearview mirror, and started the engine. The raffle draw wouldn't be until the afternoon --- there was no way she was spending another hour here, let alone five ---- and she couldn't take Lorelai to a spa holiday anyway. 

 

* 

"I've got a surprise for you," Alex said when she came back from wherever she'd been instead of taking Lorelai to brunch, which was what Lorelai had hoped Alex would do. 

"Is it a pony?" Lorelai asked, because if it was, she would be willing to forgive Alex for brunch. 

"What would you do with a pony?" Alex asked. "It'd probably eat you. No, here, look. I got you a friend." 

Alex took something out of a paper bag and propped it up against the desk calendar next to where Lorelai was standing. It was a fellow gingerbread cookie, slightly shorter than Lorelai. A guy, probably. Lorelai couldn't tell. It had no hair and its smile was crooked and he wasn't wearing any clothes, just three generic M & M buttons down his middle. 

He was kind of freaking her out, actually.

"Who is this?" she asked suspiciously. 

"Well, I don't know his name or anything," Alex said. "I just thought it might nice for you to have a friend."

"Is this some sort of blind date? Because he's not my type," said Lorelai. 

"How do you even know? You haven't even talked to him." 

Lorelai's heart skipped a beat. This cookie, this monstrous cookie --- he could talk? He was magical too, just like her? 

"Did you talk to him?" she asked Alex. 

"No," Alex said. "He's a cookie. Don't you guys need some time to come to life or something? I'm not an expert."

"We'll have to see." 

The phone rang and Alex went to get it, leaving Lorelai with her new man-friend. His eyes were two dabs of frosting, one bigger than the other. Whoever decorated him didn't love him enough to do a good job of it, and even though Lorelai knew all about not judging people by their looks, beauty was on the inside, that sort of thing, she did not have a good feeling about this cookie.

"Hello," she said quietly. 

No answer. 

"My name is Lorelai." 

Still nothing.

"You don't have the magic, do you?"

Lorelai could swear he actually leered at her when she said that, but it might've been her eyes playing tricks on her. She hadn't had any sugar to eat that day, and it was stressful waking up to find another cookie in her home, her kitchen, sharing her human. 

See, that was what Lorelai didn't understand. Why did Alex think Lorelai needed a friend? Lorelai already had Alex, and that was enough. Maybe, Lorelai thought, maybe it was Alex who wanted another friend, another cookie-friend at least --- she knew Alex had other human friends, which was a good thing, because it made her less sad --- and the thought of that filled Lorelai with a new kind of emotion that she couldn't explain, because she'd never felt it before. 

"She's _my_ human," Lorelai informed Creepy Eyes. "I was here first. Get your own human." 

Creepy Eyes didn't say anything, didn't even twitch. 

"Anything?" 

Lorelai almost jumped at the sound of Alex's voice. She turned around and Alex was there, leaning over to give Creepy Eyes a closer look. Lorelai didn't like that, and not only because Creepy Eyes was possibly the serial killer of cookies. 

"He's a man of few words," Lorelai said. 

Alex shrugged. "We'll give him some time then." 

Lorelai spent the rest of the day worrying about Creepy Eyes. He didn't show any signs of coming to life, but she couldn't stop thinking, _What if he creeps up on us when we're not paying attention?_ , and _What if he really is a serial killer?_ and _What if he's not a serial killer but is a complete douchebag who eats everything he sees and wants to watch football all day_ or _What if he's a perfect gentleman and Alex likes him better?_

Worst case scenario, Lorelai realized, was if Alex decided she only needed one cookie after all and chose this guy instead of Lorelai. 

That would be even worse than him turning out to be a serial killer. 

"Don't come alive," she whispered to him that evening, before bed. It wasn't that she didn't like him, she was just scared of him. 

The next morning, much to Lorelai's relief, Creepy Eyes was still propped up against calendar, staring creepily into the distance. 

"Guess he didn't have the magic," Lorelai explained to Alex, who didn't look terribly disappointed, also much to Lorelai's relief. "All cookies are equal but some cookies are more equal than others."

"Oh well," said Alex. She sighed. "I'm sorry, though. I was really hoping you could have a friend so you wouldn't be have to be alone all day."

"I am never truly alone when there is Showtime," Lorelai said.

"I do have something else for you though," Alex said.

"Another cupcake?" Lorelai asked hopefully.

"Just wait." Alex rifled through her purse and took out something pink. A soft, pink braid, which Alex tied around Lorelai's waist. "It really should go around your wrist, but you don't have one, so now it's a belt, I guess. A friend belt sounds pretty weird though, but there it is."


	6. Chapter 6

Alex's handler was marshal short, slight Asian man named Reagan. He worked out of the Milwaukee office, and in the two hours it took to drive from the airport to Alex's subdivision, he had briefed her on her new identity and living arrangements in a distant, slightly bored voice that Alex found comforting. 

"Do you have any questions?" he had asked after giving her a list of emergency contacts that she was supposed to memorize and then shred. 

She had shaken her head, too numb for words.

"You're a lawyer?" Reagan had asked, even though he must have already known. "My parents wanted me to be a lawyer. Or a doctor." He hadn't seemed offended, or surprised, when Alex did not answer. He'd kept talking, as if his paltry attempt at smalltalk could make Alex feel better about the fact that she no longer existed. "They even changed my last name to something less ethnic so I could get a better chance of getting into a good school. Named me after the president." 

He had said that in a way that could have meant, _I know a thing or two about losing my identity too,_ , but Alex didn't think he was capable of such depth. 

Alex had heard from Reagan exactly three times after he dropped her off at her house. The last time was right after Christmas --- he was probably checking in to make sure Alex hadn't killed herself --- and it had been so long that she was thrown when her phone rang one evening in the middle of _The Apprentice_ and caller ID informed her that it was an unlisted number.

"You need to see a shrink," he said, by way of introduction.

"I'm sorry?" Alex asked. The first thing that came to mind was that he knew, he knew about Lorelai, he knew that she was living with a talking gingerbread cookie and he thought she was insane. Or maybe he thought she was insane for not thinking it was insane to live with a talking gingerbread cookie. 

"I should apologize. I was supposed to arrange a therapy session for you in March. Mandatory six-month review to see how your PTSD is doing. But I had to take time off, and my substitute forgot, so. " 

"I don't have PTSD." 

"Take it up with the shrink."

"Who was that?" Lorelai asked when Alex returned to the living room. She bounced on the arm of the sofa, the joy with which she smiled when she saw Alex was so real that Alex knew she wasn't crazy. 

The appointment was the following Friday. She didn't tell Lorelai, because Lorelai would want to come along, and god knows how much trouble Lorelai could get into if she found her way out of Alex's purse and started running amok the offices of the WITSEC-appointed psychiatrist. (Because Lorelai was real. Lorelai was real, Alex told herself. She was.) She called in sick at work and drove to an IHOP two towns away, where Reagan was waiting for her as he dug into a stack of banana pancakes. She climbed into the black SUV and found herself in the office of one Judith E. Munro, M.D. an hour and fifteen minutes later. 

Judith E. Munro's smile was broad and genuine, which unnerved Alex. 

"Emily," she greeted. 

_Alex_ , Alex thought to herself, but a part of her was glad that the shrink was pretending not to know --- because she knew, she had to --- because it meant Alex could pretend as well, and fake her way through this meaningless afternoon. 

Munro wanted to know how she was doing, whether she was sleeping well. Alex gave her the answers she wanted: she was fine, she had trouble sleeping at first but now she easily got eight hours of shut eye every night. She missed New York, but she was coming to terms with the fact that she wouldn't be back for a long time, that she was lucky to be alive. She wasn't depressed, she didn't have panic attacks, she never thought about killing herself. She liked her job fine (lie), she drank eight glasses of water every day (lie), socially she was doing all right in her new life (partially true). 

Munro nodded her approval. "It's really important to have a support system you can depend on."

Alex snickered. "With all due respect, how am I supposed to depend on anybody when they don't know the first thing about me?"

"I'm not saying you need to trade life stories with anyone. Sometimes it just helps to have somebody around you can . . . have coffee with. Talk to about what's on TV last night. It makes a lot of difference, just feeling --- and knowing --- that you're not alone." 

Alex thought about Lorelai the night before, howling at Omarosa's antics, and realized that Munro might actually be right about something. 

And then it didn't matter anymore, whether Lorelai was real or not, whether Alex was suffering from mental disease or defect, because Lorelai was real to her, and that was enough. 

Reagan wasn't any chattier on the way back to the IHOP. "You doing all right?" he finally asked as they pulled into the parking lot. 

"I'm fine." 

He paused, then said, "Call me if you ever need anything." 

"I think I'll be all right," Alex said, and for the first time, she actually believed herself. 

 

*

 

Lorelai was taking a ride on the Roomba when she thought she heard someone at the back door. 

Which was weird, because it was a Tuesday and Alex was at work. Besides, Alex wouldn't use the back door anyway, she would come in from the garage, so this was definitely weird. 

"Go," Lorelai told her robot, which hummed quietly and began zigzagging its way across the house. It'd taken a whole week before Lorelai stopped wanting to throw up from all the spinning. 

By the time she reached the kitchen, the doorknob was jiggling and Lorelai could hear whoever it was cussing on the other side of the door, and it wasn't anybody's voice she recognized. 

Jesus Christ, someone was trying to _break in_.

"We have to call 911!" Lorelai said, panicked, and Roomba didn't say anything because it was a vacuum cleaner.

It could be a burglar, or a serial killer, or worse --- one of those people that were after Alex. The ones she had to pretend to be dead to get away from. 

_Don't let her come home,_ Lorelai thought to herself. Alex never did, anyway, but still. _Don't let her suddenly remember she left something here and needed to come back at to get it. Don't let her come back here, keep her away, keep her at the office, please please please keep her at the office ---_

There was a smash, followed by broken glass, and a hand reached through what used to be the glass panel on the door. 

The doorknob turned, as Lorelai watched, frozen, mouth open with a scream that wouldn't come out. 

Then the door opened, and the witch said, "I hope she has home insurance."

The witch helped herself to Alex's cran-apple juice while Lorelai followed after her on Roomba and tried to understand what the hell was going on. 

"How have you been doing, honey?" she asked Lorelai after a long swig from the carton. "Your human been treating you all right? Let me see you." The witch picked Lorelai up and studied her all over, frowning when she saw the pink frosting that glued Lorelai's arm together. "What happened here?" 

"I was broken," Lorelai explained. "She fixed me."

"She didn't try to eat you or anything?" 

"Nope." 

"That's good."

"I love her," Lorelai said.

"I know," said the witch. "You're supposed to. I made sure of it."

"But I ---" Lorelai stopped, trying to find the right way to put it, but words were complicated and there were too many and she learned most of them from TV, which Alex said was mostly unrelated to real life. "I don't just love her because I'm supposed to. I love her because I want to."

"Oh." The witch didn't say anything. She looked surprised first, then sad, and when she rubbed her thumb along Lorelai's head, it was like the sadness rubbed off, and at once Lorelai felt immensely stupid and melancholic at the same time. "I'm sorry, Lorelai. That wasn't supposed to happen." 

"It's not?" 

"I must've messed up the recipe somehow. Anyway." The witch waved her other hand as if to say, _so be it_. "You have to come with me, Lorelai. We've gotta go, and we've gotta to go _now_." 

Lorelai blinked. Or she would've, if she had eyelids. This was too much --- the excitement of the non-burglary, the sudden appearance of the witch, the ride on Roomba. Lorelai felt her legs buckle and she wanted to vomit. The witch must have noticed, because she muttered a few words under her breath and tapped Lorelai in the stomach. At once, the nausea was gone, but the confusion and dread --- yep, that was still here. 

"Where are we going and why are we going there?" Lorelai asked.

The witch rolled her eyes and made an irritated noise. "These boys. Goddamn _Winchesters_ ," she spat. "They've been trying to hunt me down. Apparently they've never heard of _good_ witches. They've been coming around town, trying to find and destroy my babies. They got to Kirk before I did, which is why I'm not wasting anymore time, Lorelai. We've got to go now."

Lorelai didn't fully understand who these Winchesters were or why or _how_ they were going to destroy her and her cookie friends. All she knew was that she didn't want to go. She wriggled out of the witch's hand and leaped onto the table, nearly losing her balance. But once she had steadied herself, she looked up at the witch and said, "I'm not going."

"They're going to turn you back into a cookie!" 

"I'm already a cookie!"

"A lifeless cookie. A cookie without magic. A cookie without soul."

Lorelai tried to imagine that, tried to picture herself back in the box, in the darkness, unable to talk and dance and eat and --- if the witch was right about these nasty Winchester guys --- unable to _feel_.

She couldn't. 

And she didn't want to.

It was too horrible to imagine.

But then, so was the thought of leaving Alex, the thought of Alex being all alone without anyone to be her friend. 

"If I go with you," Lorelai said, "I wouldn't have purpose."

The witch, who did have eyelids, blinked. "I beg your pardon?" 

"You said when you made us that our purpose was to keep our humans company. To be their friend. If I leave Alex and go with you, then I wouldn't have a purpose anymore."

"Oh, for god's sake," said the witch. "This isn't fucking _Dawson's Creek_. If you don't come with me now, Lorelai, these boys are going to get you. They'll take away the magic. And then Alex will be left with nothing anyway."

"That is something I have to risk," Lorelai said, making up her mind then and there, partly because she had never been more sure of anything in her (admittedly short) life, and partly because she was annoyed at being compared to _Dawson's Creek_.

That was when the Winchesters arrived.


	7. Chapter 7

There were two of them, these Winchesters.

One was older and had the scruffy thing going on for him. The younger one wasn't exactly clean-shaven, but at least he did not look like a bear. He looked sad, mostly. 

"Hello," Lorelai said, because somebody had to. Even if they were going to kill her, at least she was going to make it hard for them when they realized how polite she was and how delicious she smelled. 

"This never stops being weird," the younger one mumbled, and the older one glared at him. 

The younger one stopped and stood still, while the older one said to the witch, "How many of these are there?" 

"More than you'll ever know," answered the witch, which was not exactly helping Lorelai. "You'll never find all of them." 

The two of them glowered at each other, which Lorelai hated to interrupt because she did love a good glowering session, but she thought it was necessary to point something out. "Uh," she said, mostly to the younger one, because Ole Scruffy was still trying to murder the witch with his eyes, "you don't really need to point a gun at me. I'm a cookie." 

The younger one blinked, and then turned to the other Winchester, who nodded and said, "It's all right, Dean." 

"Yes, sir." Dean lowered his gun, but kept a suspicious eye on Lorelai. 

"Is he your human?" Lorelai asked. 

Dean went from suspicious to not knowing how to react. "What?" 

"That guy. You listen to him. Is he your human?" 

"He's my dad, and --- look. It's none of your business and I'm not talking to a cookie, okay?" 

"Why not?" Lorelai asked. "I'm an excellent conversationalist." 

The corners of Dean's mouth twitched upwards, which he tried to hide, but it was too late; in additional to being an excellent conversationalist, Lorelai also had amazing observational skills. And the uncanny ability to win people over. 

"Stay here and watch her," Dean's father said, nodding at Lorelai. "Fiona and I are going to talk outside." 

The witch's name was Fiona. Lorelai didn't think she looked much like a Fiona, but she realized it was probably not the appropriate time to comment on it. Instead, she asked Dean, "You want a soda?" 

"No."

"You want a beer?" 

This time, Dean hesitated before saying, tersely, "No." 

"You want to sit down?" 

Dean considered this and then shrugged, dragging a chair from the kitchen table and sitting down carefully, hands tight around his shotgun. Now that he was sitting down, it was even more difficult to talk to him. 

"Ahem," Lorelai said, pointing at the table. "A little help, kind sir?" 

"This is so motherfucking weird," Dean mumbled again, shaking his head a little, but he stretched out his left hand and Lorelai hopped onto it. He placed her on top of the table, even though they weren't quite at eye-level, at least Lorelai didn't need to strain her non-existent neck for a decent conversation. 

"So, Dean," Lorelai said. "My name is Lorelai." 

"Oh, god, it has a name." 

" _She_!" Lorelai corrected. "I'm not an _it_. Just because I'm a cookie doesn't mean I don't have a gender, or feelings!" 

"I'm --- really sorry, Lorelai. Almost as sorry as I am for the fact that I am actually talking to a cookie. Wow, today is not a good day." 

"Why do you want to kill me and my kind?" 

Dean looked surprised for a moment, but the moment passed, and he went back to somber. "My dad and I, we're hunters. We hunt monsters. Save people." 

"But I'm not a monster."

He looked at her long and hard. "You're a talking cookie." 

"But I'm not a monster." 

"Cookies shouldn't talk . . . or walk . . . or offer people soda. It's not right. It's not how the way it works around here." 

"Who made you the boss of everything?" 

"Look," Dean said. "Lorelai." His smile was sad; everything about him was sad. He needed a cookie, Lorelai thought. She would volunteer, but she already had a human she loved. "I don't make the rules." 

"Your dad does?" 

"You don't know anything about my dad. Or me." 

"I know you want to kill me, even though I never did anything to you."

Dean didn't say anything. 

"I don't want to die," Lorelai said. It was funny how less than an hour ago, dying hadn't even been on her mind. Now it was the only thing she could think about. She didn't want to die. She didn't want to leave Alex. She didn't want to never be able to dance or eat chocolate chips or watch Paula Deen deep-fry cheesecake or ride in Alex's bike basket again.

But mostly she just didn't want to leave Alex. 

"I need to look after her," Lorelai told Dean, who was staring at her like he couldn't believe a cookie could take care of anybody. "She needs me." 

"That's what I thought too, sweetheart," Dean said, his voice cloudy and mean, "but guess what? Maybe you're just overestimating how much he needs you." 

"She. Alex," Lorelai corrected again. This guy had a lot of trouble with his pronouns. 

"Whatever."

It was silent for a long time, and then Dean said, quietly, "I'm sorry."

Before Lorelai could tell him that she did _not_ accept his apology, Papa Winchester and the witch came back into the kitchen. Dean's shoulders straightened immediately and he jumped out of the chair. 

It's time, Lorelai thought. Goodbye, Alex. I wish I'd told you how lucky I was to be your cookie.

The witch clapped her hands together and tried to sound cheerful. "Well, well. I've got some good news. Looks like your daddy and I came to an acceptable compromise."

"I'm listening," said Lorelai.

 

* 

Alex had packed her lunch that day --- a peanut butter and marshmallow fluff sandwich, which Lorelai considered the only acceptable kind of sandwich ---- because she was tired of the greasy Chinese food from the place down the block, and she was fairly certain the pseudo-sushi at Tokyo Joe's could very likely lead to cholera. She finished her sandwich in ten minutes, washed it down with a bottle of diet Snapple, which tasted the way the office felt, artificial and watered down, and went out for a walk. Not that there was anything much to see or do in this town, in the whole great state of Wisconsin, even, but she needed to stretch her legs a bit and the company encouraged its employees to get some fresh air during the day. "Keeps the suicide rate down," the head of HR had explained during the office Christmas party. 

When she got back to her cubicle, Margaret was there, looking anxious. Alex took this to be a very bad sign, since Margaret was rarely anxious about anything, having developed the trademark _laissez-faire_ attitude of someone who had worked in the same place since college graduation, in practically the same position, for practically the same pay. 

"Thank god you're back, Emily," she said, pressing her hand against Alex's arm. "Your alarm company called. There's been a break-in at your place or something --- I'm not a hundred percent sure on the details, but I know they've called the police." 

The first thought that crossed Alex's mind was: _Lorelai_. 

She realized how ridiculous it was afterwards, on the drive back to her house, one of dozens in her subdivision. Nothing would happen to Lorelai. She was smart; she knew where to hide. If it was burglars, then they would be only after her money, her valuables,and she didn't have any.

If it were Velez's men --- well, they would be after _her_ , not Lorelai. 

The police were waiting in her driveway, so she circled the cul-de-sac and parked by the curb. There were three of them: two men, one older, one younger, both scowling, and a woman, who was glaring at them. Only in the suburbs would they send three cops to a break in. In New York, there would be a team of uniforms and CSU and at least one of them, usually the rookie, would look somewhat interested in what was going on. 

"Miss Saunders?" the older man said as Alex stepped out of the car. "I'm Detective Morgan. Your alarm company recorded a breach earlier this morning and called the police. We've been investigating a chain of B&Es in the neighborhood and were immediately put on the case."

Alex shook his hand, but instead of reassured, it only made her heart pound faster. She didn't care what any of these people had to say. She just wanted to get back into the house and see that Lorelai was all right.

"Now the good news is ---"

"Let me deliver the good news," snapped the woman, who didn't seem like his partner, Alex thought. She knew what partners were like, knew how they behaved around each other. Something was off about them --- and the third guy, the third guy just looked like he wanted to disappear. 

"Fine," said Morgan. "Detective Ferris will take it up from here." 

Ferris scowl turned into a smile as she took Alex's hand and said, "The good news is, nothing appears to have been stolen. It seems like that alarm of yours scared these guys off. But the bad news is that a couple of glass panels on your back door are broken and will need to be replaced." 

"I work for an insurance company," Alex found herself saying. "It'll be fine." 

Morgan took charge again. "Do you want Officer Ackles here to take you back inside, walk you through the house? We've already gone inside and checked there's nothing out of the ordinary, nobody hiding in the closet or anything. But we'd be glad to accompany you inside for some peace of mind." 

"It's all right," Alex said, wondering when this insipid conversation would ever end. "I just want to go back inside. Sorry."

"We understand," Morgan said. He handed Alex a card, which she shoved into her pocket without looking. "If you need anything, just call." 

She went in through the back door. There was broken glass all over her kitchen floor and she carefully stepped through it into her kitchen, which was exactly like the way she had left it this morning, dishes in the sink, the knife still smeared with peanut butter. 

"Lorelai," she called softly, as she made her way through the house. "Lorelai, where are you?" 

Usually Lorelai would be watching TV in the living room when Alex came home, but to be fair Alex had very little idea of what went on in her house during the day. Given the messes she had found from time to time, everywhere from the front porch to the attic, Alex knew Lorelai had a way of getting around and into trouble. 

The living room was empty, Lorelai's usual place on the sofa abandoned. 

"Lorelai," Alex said, louder, trying to think of places where a six-inch cookie would hide. 

There were _lots_ of places where a six-inch cookie would hide.

Lorelai wouldn't go into the basement, because the spiders, or rather, the _expectation_ of spiders scared her, but Alex checked anyway. 

Nothing. 

"Lorelai!" Alex could no longer keep the panic out of her voice. 

It could be that Lorelai had just fallen asleep wherever she was hiding; didn't that happen, often? Didn't parents report their children missing only to find them having fallen asleep in the dryer, or gone over to the neighbor's house without saying? Alex remembered Olivia being called in the middle of the night once, because a frantic mother had found her toddler missing and sworn that her ex had kidnapped him. The kid was found snuggled in a nest of dirty laundry in his mother's closet. 

It had to be the only explanation, because burglars, because Velez's people, they wouldn't come all the way to Nowheresville, Wisconsin to take Lorelai; they wouldn't even know about Lorelai. 

But wasn't that the point in most kidnappings? In order to get someone to comply to your demands, you kidnap the person they cared about most? 

"LORELAI." This time it was almost a scream. 

Alex found her upstairs, on top of Alex's bedspread. She was propped up against Alex's pillow, grinning that gummy grin like she always did. 

"Oh, thank _god_ ," Alex said, her moment of relief short-lived as she remembered to be angry. "Why didn't you answer me earlier?" 

Lorelai didn't say anything, and that's when Alex noticed something was wrong. 

Her smile was fixed and frozen, her eyes lifeless and cold. Alex reached out and touched Lorelai's arm, the one that had been broken and put back together. 

It was cold. 

"Lorelai?" Alex said again, quietly, as if being calm and rational could make things right again. "Lorelai, answer me." 

Lorelai just smiled.


	8. Chapter 8

It took Alex two days to reconcile the fact that Lorelai wasn't coming back.

It took her another two days to realize that she probably had been delusional all along --- she remembered from lunches with Huang that hallucinations are a common symptom of PTSD --- because cookies didn't magically spring to life and become your best friend. 

She couldn't bear to throw Lorelai away though, delusion or no delusion. The closest she came was to leave Lorelai on the windowsill one morning while she took her laundry to the dry cleaner's. (She was not sure why; nothing she owned actually required dry cleaning.) 

But when she stepped out of her car and into the sun, she thought, _There might be ants, Lorelai is scared of ants,_ , and somehow she found herself behind the wheel again, driving home, to Lorelai.

The only logical thing left to do was to put Lorelai away in a Tupperware container, which Alex conceded was a very liberal interpretation of "logical," but she couldn't bear to throw Lorelai away and she couldn't stand to look at Lorelai either, not like this, cold and wrong and eyes frozen. 

The Tupperware had a bright blue lid, and Alex stuffed it with tissues before placing Lorelai ever so carefully inside. It hit her then, like a fist in her gut, that Lorelai looked like she was lying in a coffin. Alex felt the burn of bile as it rose in her throat, and clamped the lid shut. 

_Breathe_ , she told herself. _Breathe._

Lorelai needed to breathe too. 

(Except she didn't, because she was a cookie.) 

_Air holes_ , Alex thought. She could punch air holes into lid, just in case. 

She didn't have nails, though, or a hammer; she had a screwdriver somewhere but it was a souvenir from the moving guys who put her furniture together. 

Alex drove to Home Depot to buy a nail. 

The line was long, and when she finally got to the check-out counter, the clerk asked, _Is there anything else, ma'am?_ She shook her head, and it was then that Alex realized Velez had won. 

That he had won because she was in a Home Depot in suburban Wisconsin, buying a single nail to punch air holes in a Tupperware container for a cookie she considered her best friend, and she didn't give a shit about it at all. She didn't give a shit about anything. 

She understood then, that it is never the bullet that kills you; it's knowing that there is no longer anything in the world that you care about. 

The nail cost 32 cents. 

*

Alex used to work late at the office, and, ironically, now she stayed late at the office. 

(She also used to hate the word "ironically," the way she hated the suburbs and the Midwest and teenage soap operas, and look where she was now.) 

She never really had to _work_. There was nothing that could not be done in the course of nine long hours, no deadlines to meet, no sudden need to knock on a judge's door for a warrant, no victims for whom to seek justice.

Instead she sat in her cubicle and played Freecell on her computer, because at least Freecell had the decency to tell you when it was over. You have no moves left. Once she had stayed until nine playing Spider Solitaire, undoing and undoing and undoing until she lost track of where she had gone wrong. After that she stuck to Freecell. 

She brought Lorelai to work with her now. Ironically (there it was again), even though Lorelai couldn't run or speak or hatch elaborate plans to make Alex's life as complicated as possible, Alex found herself worrying even more, checking on Lorelai every fifteen minutes or so, lifting the lid of the Tupperware container to make sure that Lorelai was still there. She made no attempt to hide it, keeping the container within reach at all times, locking it away in her drawer when she had to go to the restroom or to a meeting. Everybody saw, she was sure, but nobody commented, at least not in front of her. There was an unspoken consensus that each person in the office was allowed to have one weird thing. Tim in accounts shouted motivational sayings at himself, and Laurence collected potato chip bags.

Emily carried a Tupperware container around like a security blanket.

Alex drew the line at talking to Lorelai when other people were around. Alone, once or twice she would say, "Good morning, Lorelai," or "We're going home, Lorelai," mostly out of habit rather than any anticipation that Lorelai would answer back. 

(She never did.)

"You should come over for dinner," Margaret said one day, as Alex absently trailed her fingers along the edge of the Tupperware with one hand and put a 6 of hearts on top of a 7 of clubs with the other. 

Alex looked up. "Sounds good," she said, because it was easier than to make an excuse, and she counted on Margaret forgetting about it eventually. "Thanks." 

"Tonight," Margaret decided, in an authoritative tone that she used with everybody, even the boss, which probably was why she was the secretarial manager but not, and would never be, anything higher. "We'll stop by KFC, grab a bucket of chicken, and go back to my place. The kids will be glad to see you."

Alex blinked, unsure of what just happened. She vaguely remembered the little girl with the friendship bracelet. Blonde hair, freckles. "What?" 

"You didn't expect me to cook, did you? My daughter learned to make pudding at Girl Scouts though, so at least there's homemade dessert." 

Margaret wouldn't take no for an answer, and Alex figured that eating fried chicken with several strangers would not be all that different from eating KFC by herself at home, and kids needed to go to bed early, didn't they? The evening couldn't possibly last too long. 

Margaret's house was ten blocks away from Alex's, an older subdivision, where the trees had had a chance to grow tall enough for rope swings and climbing. "Dinner!" Margaret yelled when she came through the door, Alex trailing behind her. Her husband materialized and took the food away as a small, blond whirlwind attacked from behind and hugged Margaret's legs. 

"Mommy!" the boy hollered blissfully. Patrick, Alex though his name was. 

Margaret planted a kiss on her son's head and said, "Say hi to Emily." 

"Hi, Emily!" Patrick chirped, and then Sienna appeared, saying something about having set the table, and before Alex knew what was happening, she was sandwiched between the two kids. Sienna chatted incessantly and wanted to share every deal about her third-grade life. Patrick only wanted to eat the skin of the chicken and did not even deign to poke at his coleslaw. "Emily, do you want my coleslaw?" he offered as Margaret shook her head at Alex. 

"I'm good for now," Alex said. "It's actually really delicious. You should try it." 

"You're a liar," Patrick told her.

"Patrick!" his parents said in unison, but Alex just laughed it off. Almost ten months in witness protection, all that effort by the DEA and the federal marshals, and here she was, found out by a four-year-old.

"Tiffany wants my coleslaw," Patrick said. 

"Are we doing this again?" Sienna asked, exasperated. 

Margaret spooned a generous amount of coleslaw onto the empty plate next to Patrick's. "Tiffany has her own. Now eat yours."

"Who's Tiffany?" Alex asked. 

"My best friend in the world," Patrick said. 

"She's not real," Sienna explained. 

Her brother responded by kicking her under the table, and several bruised shins later (including Alex's, such was the danger of sitting between children), Margaret threatened them both with no cartoons and Bruce tried to distract everybody with the promise of pudding. Alex offered to help with the dishes, but Bruce refused to let her, so she sat on the sofa and waited for Patrick to bring his favorite toys from his bedroom to show her.

"I'm sorry about my brother," Sienna said. "He's really weird."

"No, honey, he's just sad." Margaret stopped braiding her daughter's hair and added, sternly, "Be nice to him, all right?" 

"What happened?" Alex asked, wondering why it was that even here, in this new, strange life, she couldn't seem to stop attracting herself to damaged children. 

"His best friend moved away," said Sienna. "His real best friend. So now he has an imaginary best friend. Isn't that weird?"

"No," Alex said, feeling warm and cold at the same time. Her head throbbed.

"Thank you," Margaret said. "You heard what Emily said. Now stop picking on your brother."

"I still think it's weird," Sienna said, but left it, opting in favor of combing the mane of her My Little Pony instead.

Patrick appeared with an armful of action figures and Hot Wheels and what was likely the biggest collection of Thomas the Engine merchandise in the world. Alex pretended to listen with fervent interest as he introduced each one to her. Not to be outdone, Sienna intervened and began asking Alex's opinion on the Powerpuff Girls. This type of NITA-approved cross-examination continued until Margaret decided that it was bed time and Emily had to go home.

"There's a girl engine named Emily," Patrick said, and Alex had to commend his persistence in trying to convince her to watch _Thomas & Friends_.

"I'll think about it," Alex told him. "Bye Patrick." She hesitated, then added, "Bye, Tiffany."

The grin that bloomed across Patrick's face brought a smile to hers as well.

"Thanks," Bruce said, as he walked Alex to her car, even though it was less than ten feet away, right across the street. "That was kind of you."

Alex felt better on the drive home, replaying Bruce's words in her head. She did a kind thing for Patrick, so she still had that left. Kindness. Something Alex Cabot was never particularly well-known for.

 _In the end, only kindness matters,_ Lorelai would say. _Ugh, kill me now. I'm quoting Jewel._

Alex laughed to herself, quietly, and at the next red light, she took the Tupperware container out of her purse and opened the lid. She lifted Lorelai out, gently, and placed her back in her usual spot in the cupholder.

"Hi, Lorelai," Alex said. "It's been a while."

*

Talking to a cookie that didn't talk back was only slightly crazier than talking to a cookie that did. Or maybe it was the other way around, Alex couldn't tell for sure, but she didn't care, and there were worse ways to be crazy.

She rode her bike around the neighborhood on the weekends, with Lorelai in the basket. She made it all the way to the edge of town once and ached all over by the time she came home, a good kind of ache, the kind that reminded her that she was still alive. "That was fun, wasn't it?" she said to Lorelai, who smiled as she always did now, but Alex knew riding in the basket had always been one of Lorelai's favorite things to do.

One Sunday she passed by a church as the service was ending and people were filing out, and Alex realized that they were the same. These people talked to an unseen god who did not talk back and believed in a man who died and came back from the dead. How was that any different than Alex talking to a cookie and believing that Lorelai had once been alive? Huang would probably have words to say about how justifying her own insanity proves just how far gone Alex is, but Huang wasn't here, Lorelai was.

"I just compared you to the Messiah," Alex told Lorelai as she pushed the bike back into its place in her garage. "You would be so flattered."

Alex could have sworn that Lorelai's smile gets a little wider.

Margaret invited her to dinner again, this time with real home-cooked food that Bruce made and cookies for dessert. "I made these myself," Sienna said proudly. "I washed my hands too, so they're safe."

"What's your favorite cookie?" Patrick asked as he bit into an Oreo, obviously having far less confidence in his sister than the adults. "I like chocolate chip the best."

"Gingerbread," Alex said without thinking.

*

The days passed.

*

Her alarm clock malfunctioned in the middle of the night, and Alex woke up half an hour late. "Fuck fuck fuck," she muttered to herself as she jumped into the shower. She was out the door in less than fifteen minutes, the ends of her hair still damp, and it wasn't until she was two blocks away that she remembered she had left Lorelai on her nightstand.

" _Fuck,_ " she said, glancing at the time. She wouldn't make it on time to her 9:30 client conference even if she turned around now and headed home for Lorelai. She would have to wait until lunch.

The conference call dragged on forever. The client was calling from South Africa and had trouble connecting. Alex's boss had no idea what was going on and ended up repeating the client's questions to him in an effort to detract from the fact that he didn't have a clue how to answer them. Alex took notes, mostly, and watched the clock. Analog, she discovered, moves much more slowly than digital.

Eventually they lost the connection, and Francis made a half-hearted attempt at dialing back before giving up and asking his secretary to reschedule. Alex excused herself and dropped off the files at her desk.

"Where you going?" asked Margaret, and Alex mumbled something about an early lunch.

She left the car running in the driveway. It took longer than she would've liked to open the front door, fingers fumbling for keys through stray Mentos and business cards from the marketing event the company hosted last week. As soon as it was open, she darted up the stairs and into her bedroom, only to find the Tupperware container lying in pieces on the floor.

"Lorelai!" she shouted, and in that same moment, she thought, _This is how I'm going to die._

There was a muffled noise from below, and then the sound of somebody walking up the stairs.

 _Velez_ , Alex thought. _They've found me. They've found me and they've killed Lorelai and they're going to kill me too,_ and she was going to let them, because she didn't care anymore. She didn't have anything left in her to care.

But it was not Velez.

"What?" said the woman in the doorway. "What the hell are you screaming about? I'm _right here_."

No. No, this couldn't ---

"You look like you've never seen me before," the woman continued. "Honestly, I'm a little hurt."

"You're not Lorelai," Alex said, and there was a part of her that wondered why she was having a conversation with an intruder in her house instead of calling 911. There was another part of her that just wondered.

"Of course I'm Lorelai," the woman said. "Who else would I be?"

"You can't be."

The woman shrugged. There was something familiar about her eyes. "Why not? You loved me to life. Stranger things have happened."

"Prove it," said Alex. Just because this woman had curly brown hair and blue eyes and ruby slippers and --- was that a pink scar on her elbow? --- didn't mean anything.

"Oh, _Alex_ ," the woman said, in a tone that Alex knew, almost for certain, that she had heard before. 

"Prove it," Alex repeated.

The woman rolled her eyes and walked the length of the room until she was standing in front of Alex. "Look," she said, and turned around, unzipping her green dress.

There, on the small of her back, were the words ALEX CABOT.

Alex heard somebody gasp, and then Lorelai saying, "Come on, now, you're not going to faint on me, are you?"

"You're back," Alex said, reaching out to touch Lorelai's cheek, which was warm, it was warm, her neck was warm, her lips were warm, she was alive, she was alive. Alive.

"I never left," Lorelai said and closing the distance between them, kissed her.


End file.
